Goal for 2014 #16 – Start Grad School

This is a late post but I started working on my list of resolutions for 2014! Here we go, #16 – Start Grad School has been checked off the list. In December of 2015 I will have my Masters in Library and Information Science! So I drove down for orientation, and tried to take pictures, but this school doesn’t have signs everywhere like Clemson did so I didn’t get to take any pictures with Carolina signs. However, I did get a picture of a giant bird sculpture.

Also, as I was leaving the city a drunk guy (beer in hand) ran into my car (on foot) and gave me a scary look, but I didn’t get pictures of that because I thought I was about to get mugged. But that is neither here nor there. But since I am such a slacker, I actually have more to add to this post than just my near mugging and bird pictures.

Here we have it, the five things that I’ve learned (so far) in grad school!

1. I don’t play well with others.

Group work is not my thing. I have no patience and am all about voting someone off the project island within a day of their first infraction. I don’t play when it comes to grades and I can’t really say the same for 99% of my classmates.

2. Experience is your friend.

A lot of the people I’ve met have little or no library experience. So every time the professor asks people to tell about their experience processing materials, selecting materials, dealing with patrons, I get to be Hermione Granger in the front row with my hand up.

3. Career expectations, or “who thinks you’re going to read at work?”

They asked this question at orientation, and I almost spit out my drink that I wasn’t supposed to have in that auditorium in the first place. And just when I expected the others to burst out laughing with me, hands started going up around the room. It is true; I read more now that I work in a library. But that is on my own time. Advice to classmates—do your research!

4. I’m not as weird as I thought.

Let’s face it—libraries attract a…special type of person. And I consider myself decently eccentric, but I’m nothing compared to some of the characters I’ve met. If you introduce yourself as Princess Moon Mushroom or Horsey (*names have been changed…but only a little) you definitely take the weird cake over me.

5. You have to be a time lord.

For example, one assignment was posted ten days before it was due. And it turned to be a seventy page paper—on one of the most boring topics in the world. I really need the doctor to come help me out with these papers.